Wednesday, August 22, 2012

I stared into her eyes, trying to discreetly find something the background check did not. As we exchanged niceties about the weather and traffic, little did she know I was sizing her up faster than you can say "nanny cam."

The news in our house is that Mommy's working full-time. Okay, I freelance, but this is a long-term gig with long hours and frequent weekend shoots. And so we entered the world of nannies. We borrowed a friend's nanny on occasion last year, but I was always working at home when she was there and still very connected to what was going on. That lady disappeared back to Mexico without a trace. This time, we wanted to find someone legal since, hey, don't Americans need jobs? We were under a time crunch and ended up having to use a posh West side nanny service. We settled on a bubbly, twentysomething part-time student and LO already loves her, which makes me feel good.

What doesn't make me feel good is that feeling that I'm hiring someone to do my job of being a mother. Just farming out my motherly responsibilities and abandoning my child. I miss her during the day. I'm jealous that someone else gets to hang out with her. Yet when I had the luxury of being a SAHM, I guiltily yearned to get back out there in the working world. I think being a SAHM is much harder than the paid working world. There's no one patting you on the back saying "Great job!" and nobody evaluating your performance for a possible raise.

In other news, in the week that DH was at home keeping LO, she picked up some new vocabulary. I came home the other night to find her saying "F*ck" after dropping her Play-Doh. Just in time for preschool! Potty training is going at a snail's pace and we only have a couple more weeks until school starts. I'm just picturing her peeing on the classroom floor and yelling "F*ck!" Can't wait to get that call. But then again, I guess I don't have to stress TOO much about fixing her vocab and toilet habits -- that's the nanny's job!